Custom The Cold War Essay

Historians consider the Cold War to be the main political issue of the 20th century. The confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union started in 1917 after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and establishment of the communist regime. The leader of the Russian communist regime Lenin wanted to spread communism all over the world. That was the reason to start the Cold War between two superpowers: the USA and the Soviet Union. It was a long struggle between two countries for supremacy to have a status of superpower (Martin et al. 87).

The term “cold war” was first introduced in 1947 after the Second World War by senior adviser to the American President Harry Truman – Bernard Baruch. The research states that there is no common agreement about the exact date of the beginning of the Cold War, but most historians consider that 1945 was the year when the relations between Moscow and Washington started deteriorating. The Cold War lasted till the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Both great super powerful countries were afraid to fight each other directly because of the nuclear weapons which they had. Instead of direct and open war they used their military power in different parts of the world creating conflicts and local wars. Though fighting together against Nazi Germany in the Second World War, they opposed each other due to their desire to take the dominant position in the world. Western governments saw the former Soviet Union as the main threat because of its communist ideology.

The Cold War separated the world into three groups: the western countries with democratic political systems led by the United States, while the eastern countries which supported the communist political systems were led by the Soviet Union. The third group included countries which did not support any of the two states (Martin et al. 95). The Cold War was exhaustible for both nations and as any other war it was supposed to be finished one day. The winning country was the USA which later became the most powerful empire the world has ever known before.